Gift Giving Tips From A Minimalist
This is the second video in our How To Prep for A Holiday Like A Minimalist series. Today I am answering your questions about gift giving.
Before I start answering you questions, I want to talk about a really important aspect of gift giving. Budget. It doesn’t sound like a fun word, but we all have one. Even if we don’t set a budget, we have an amount of money we can spend without going into debt. So go ahead and set a budget.
The first thing I do is determine what my budget is for gifts. Then I add each person I am giving a gift to that list. Don’t forget about any teachers or friends you are giving gifts to.
Next, working within that budget I determine what I am planning to spend on each person. Once I purchase a gift, I make a note of that and add what I actually spent. Seeing this in front of me allows me to see where my budget is standing.
Now, on to your questions.
Do you have gift ideas?
Yes! We have an entire video coming up that is full of ideas and links for gift ideas. I will add this. If you are uncertain on what to give someone, give them a gift card or cash. That is always a better option than just buying something for the sake of buying it.
I love buying fun gifts, but if it is something they don’t really want or need, I am just adding clutter to their life. Use the golden rule here. Do unto others as you wish for them to do to you.
One of my favorite gifts to give is something I have been loving and using in my own life.
Gift exchange ideas?
If you have a larger family, or maybe even for a smaller family, I love the idea of drawing names. This way you can use your entire budget on one person rather than buying small gifts for each person.
The White Elephant, or sometimes called Dirty Santa, game is also a ton of fun! There are a variety of ways to play that. You can find those ways on Pinterest.
How do you keep boundaries on spending when everyone else spends more? Or if you feel they expect you to spend the same?
This is a great question because I know a lot of us have felt this in various seasons of life. When we were in our season of paying off our debts, we were just open and honest with our family. We bought gifts for our parents, they were small, but we spoke with our siblings and asked that they did not buy for us because we were limiting presents. I do not mean to sound harsh at all, but buying because of guilt is not healthy. A healthy boundary is expressing, kindly, what works for your family. Whether they receive it or not is entirely up to them.
Even though we are in a different stage of life now, my sister and I decided to only buy for each other’s kids. And we know our kids get gifts from all kinds of people so we keep a low budget and make it about the kids exchanging gifts with each other.
Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. :)
What is your gift process for your kids if you try to keep a minimal amount of toys?
I do one of two things for my kids each year, either we do a trip or I do want-need-wear-read.
For the trip, we come up with a creative way to give them a gift and tell them about a fun trip that we are about to go on. I might give them a gift that will be useful on that trip.
This year we aren’t doing that, so I am going back to a plan I heard about years ago and used a few years back. Each child gets 4 gifts.
Want - something they have been wanting.
Need - something they need.
Wear - something to wear
Read - something to read.
This is a really fun way to plan your gifts. They have plenty to unwrap, but aren’t overwhelmed with toys. We did this when my daughter was 3 and here are the things I bought her.
Want - A little stuffed animal veterinarian set - she was obsessed with animals at that point.
Need - Slippers (these were $3 at Target and she wore them daily!)
Wear - New pjs with a favorite princess on them
Read - A book all about animals
What about wrapping paper and bags?
Many of you have heard me talk about when we first moved to this house. We had been traveling for ministry for 7 years and I was thrilled to have a house to celebrate Christmas in. The year before we moved I hit up all the clearance after Christmas sales in anticipation of being home for Christmas the next year. I bought the giant wrapping paper rolls at Sam’s Club and tons of beautiful ribbon from Home Goods. In fact, I bought so much that I was extremely sick of that wrapping paper after about 4 years. I gave the wrapping paper away to a family member who wanted it and converted to using brown wrapping paper. I still have quite a few beautiful rolls of ribbon and I have been using that for SEVEN years now! Yes.
So my first recommendation is to use up what you have. If you truly don’t want to do that, then you need to donate it before you buy more.
In order to make it easier on myself, and I think it’s beautiful, I started using brown butcher wrapping paper for all occasions and swapping out the ribbon. I also keep white gift bags on hand and I will use pretty tags or tissue paper to dress it up. I have a blog post all about wrapping ideas HERE.
I have found that simple wrapping is the most beautiful to me.
Giving gifts is a fun part of Christmas. And somehow it has become a little bit complicated. Let’s take that out of this Christmas and remember that gift is about the gesture.
I set a goal for myself to buy all of my presents by Thanksgiving and then I like to spend a bit of time around Thanksgiving wrapping gifts. I don’t always reach this goal, but if I’m finished buying by then, it sure gives me margin for goodness in December.